Multi-material fibers are a promising platform for integrating nanoscale structures into macroscale photonic systems due to their unique aspect ratio: fiber cores can be kilometers long and sub-micrometric in their cross-section simultaneously. We are introducing Very Large-Scale Integration for Fibers (or, in short, VLSI-Fi) – manufacturing of integrated photonic circuits in a fiber analogous to VLSI from the microelectronics realm. VLSI-Fi starts with a thermal draw of the 3D printed preform, defining the cross-sectional geometry of the fiber, followed by the axial patterning of the fiber cores into arrays of integrated devices using a material-selective spatially coherent capillary breakup1,2 . Additional control over the photonic and electronic properties of devices is accomplished through segregation-driven control of doping. The result is a fiber-embedded integrated photonic circuit with user-defined 3D architecture providing the desired functionality. We argue that the capillary breakup of a viscous thread, nonlinear and often chaotic, becomes predictable if the axial symmetry of the thread viscosity is broken. We found that the capillary breakup of semiconducting fiber cores initiated by feeding the fiber through a spot-like liquefaction zone results in deterministic photonic and optoelectronic structures, such as gratings and spherical resonators. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate a selective breakup of a silicon core in fiber with one silicon and one vanadium core into an array of spherical silicon resonators, with a vanadium electrode flanking those resonators for electrical tuning of their resonant frequencies. Such cascaded resonators are a nontrivial example of photonic circuitry implemented in fiber using a non-CMOS approach.
KEYWORDS: Transparent conductors, Dye sensitized solar cells, Solar cells, Electron beams, Solid state electronics, Interfaces, X-ray diffraction, Diffraction, Liquids, Solid state physics
Electron beam induced current (EBIC) was applied in the study of dye sensitized solar cell (DSSC), which present properties such as electrical stability, the possibility to use curved geometries, and cost-effectiveness. In the studied cells, the liquid electrolyte was replaced by a solid-state hole transport material (HTM) based on spiro-OMeTAD solution. Since the irradiation of electrons in a solar cell produces electron-hole pairs in a similar way as the photon irradiation, the EBIC measurements allowed the evaluation of the conductivity between FTO and electrolyte containing TiO2, the current homogeneity in the active layer, the EBIC signal behavior as a function of cell thickness, and the differences observed in the collection of electron and holes in each contact, leading to the mapping of the charge carrier generation and collection efficiency in the cross section of the DSSC. The combination of EBIC, grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) and Energy dispersive spectrometry (EDS/SDD) were used to demonstrate the homogeneity of the generated electrical current, phase and composition distribution in the studied cells. The enhancement in the electrical conduction between the contact layer (FTO) and the photoanode after treatment with TiCl4 was demonstrated. Our work demonstrates that EBIC can be used as an important support quality control technique of solid-state dye sensitized solar cells, indicating the need of efficiency improvement in regions like the interface between FTO/TiO2 and depth distribution of HTM into the cell.
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